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how on earth does anybody think a bad student is hidden among good students? it's preposterous.

The reluctance or inability of proponents of busing to produce stats indicating significantly improved academic achievement by economically challenged kids who attend schools with lower numbers of F&R students, and the failure to statistically document the success of WCPSS's former assignment plan for all kids just beg the questions.

In a stats-driven world, stats should be readily available to support a point.

I understand what ApexWolfpacker is saying, but it does seem to me that in fact WCPSS did mask the problem, in that they tended to focus on school performance rather than student achievement. I think the SAS report regarding middle school Algebra tracking for minority students really showed how blind the system was to what was happening.

So they developed levels for each grade. A, B, C and D. The best performing students in A and the worst performing students in D. Class sizes averaged 35 students. The teachers were able to conduct the lessons at a pace which the students could learn at based on being broken into different levels.

That sounds like what we have in the high schools here, unless something has drastically changed since I graduated. AP courses, advance courses, standard courses, and remedial courses.

any specific students problems are not "masked" by moving him to a different school.

why or what would you think is masked?

the question doesn't make sense to me. every student is grade as an individual. this seems obvious

Individual students are not masked, but by bringing lower performing students to higher performing schools, we dilute the overall achievement rates for the school. The same holds true for turning low performing schools into magnet schools. We raise the overall achievement statistics for the school. So, the question that begs to be asked is, "who benefits".

If we had data that showed improvement for any of the groups being bused around the county, then the integration proponents would have something to hang their hat on. Until then, what we are looking at is a social experiment that doesn't work.

yes a problem you want. you want low-income schools, and then you want somebody else to work to solve the problems you wabt to create with them

and for a second time, we do not have a bunch of avergae schools. we do have poor students in excellent schools

how on earth does anybody think a bad student is hidden among good students? it's preposterous.

Hiding individidual students is preposterous but hiding groups of student has been SOP. That is why NCLB required school system and individual schools to be disagregated. One of the things that doesn't get discussed often is, the flight of middle and upper middle class African Americans from the inner city to the burbs and increasingly now to the inner burbs. Successful African American parents often seek similar communities of cross cultural higher achieving students. One of the great ways to improve group statistics is to remix the lower income African American students back in with the higher income African American students thus blending their performance together. This does hide how poorly the low income students were doing. On the other hand another strategy is to group as many low achieving students together in a few schools and let those schools have horrible scores and help purify the scores elsewhere. At any rate pupil assingment policy is often one of the best tools to accomplish aggregate achievement outcomes. It is comparable to a mulitple basket investment strategy where you protect your short term money from the impact of the flucuations up and down from your long term holdings basket. That was one of the problems of target date funds they were all blended together. If you practice three baskets you will know what I am talking about. It can only be a few student difference betweey making and not making AYP in a district like Wake.

I understand what ApexWolfpacker is saying, but it does seem to me that in fact WCPSS did mask the problem, in that they tended to focus on school performance rather than student achievement. I think the SAS report regarding middle school Algebra tracking for minority students really showed how blind the system was to what was happening.

Yes and they were forced to do so by NCLB which set up a system of evaluating schools based on student performance via standardized tests disaggregated by race and ethicity disabliltiy etc.

Every school district that receives Title I funds (more than 98% of school districts nationally) must also publish a school district report card. These report cards must include all of the same data as the state-level report card, but for the school district as-a-whole and for each individual school in the district.

The reluctance or inability of proponents of busing to produce stats indicating significantly improved academic achievement by economically challenged kids who attend schools with lower numbers of F&R students, and the failure to statistically document the success of WCPSS's former assignment plan for all kids just beg the questions.

In a stats-driven world, stats should be readily available to support a point.

what does that have to do with masking any problem? there is no problem that is masked. there is an obvious problem for which some have proposed that placing all the problems in one place is a bright idea

I understand what ApexWolfpacker is saying, but it does seem to me that in fact WCPSS did mask the problem, in that they tended to focus on school performance rather than student achievement. I think the SAS report regarding middle school Algebra tracking for minority students really showed how blind the system was to what was happening.

They focus on school results to show that there are no predominantly bad schools. That is an entirely different matter than accusing them of "masking the problem". There are copius amounts of public disclosures that thoroughly detail the results based on race.

It's completely self-contradictory to a.) cite public records that clearly indicate lower rates for minorities and then b.) claim the problem that you just provided public information on is somehow "masked". It is not masked in the least. The assertion is specious. But it does appear to be good politics.

Individual students are not masked, but by bringing lower performing students to higher performing schools, we dilute the overall achievement rates for the school. The same holds true for turning low performing schools into magnet schools. We raise the overall achievement statistics for the school. So, the question that begs to be asked is, "who benefits".

If we had data that showed improvement for any of the groups being bused around the county, then the integration proponents would have something to hang their hat on. Until then, what we are looking at is a social experiment that doesn't work.

Nothing is "diluted". Yet another specious assertion. Studnets are differentiated. Successful studnets are not impeded.

And we have a proposal with no statistics that show it will improve results, and plenty of examples that are disasters.

Can any of the advocates of neighborhood schools explain how grouping all low income students together is going to achieve better results, and provide statistics?

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